Why House Of Gucci Is Turning Out To Be A Financial Disappointment

After months of anticipation, Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci was finally released during the Thanksgiving Holiday. The 2021 film features Lady Gaga as Patrizia Reggiani, an outsider who manages to marry into the Gucci family and unravel the strong foundation that leads to betrayal, revenge, and ultimately murder. Despite a very promising trailer, the movie was marked with decent reviews that resulted in a passable score of 62%. While the reviews weren’t glowing, House of Gucci still had a nice buzz surrounding the film; however, once the holiday weekend was said and done, House of Gucci only made $21.8 million from the five-day holiday opening. In general, the entire box office was quite lackluster with Encanto only making $43.3 million; however, with the buzz that House of Gucci had then the film should’ve made more than a notably weak $21.8 million. With a $75 million production price tag, House of Gucci will need to make over $100 million to not be considered a total flop, but with Spiderman: No Way Home and West Side Story coming out in the next couple of weeks then it unlikely that the film will even reach $50 million. So, what happened? House of Gucci had an all-star cast with a name director that was backpacked by an awesome trailer that pumped up the hype for the Ridley Scott film. This article will deeply examine why House of Gucci is turning out to be a financial disappointment. Obviously, the pandemic is still a reason that films in 2021 are seeing lackluster box office returns so that won’t be mentioned here. Don’t worry, if you plan on seeing House of Gucci then this article is spoiler free.

Ridley Scott Trashing Audiences Because Of The Last Duel

A month prior, Ridley Scott released the period drama, The Last Duel, which garnered better reviews than House of Gucci; however, it flopped hard during its box office run. The Matt Damon vehicle carried a price tag of $100 million, but unfortunately, The Last Duel only made $28.80 million worldwide. Scott addressed the film’s box office failure and blamed millennials: “What we’ve got today [are] the audiences who brought up on these fucking cell phones,” he said, speaking on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast. “The millennials, [who] do not ever want to be taught anything unless you’re told it on the cell phone,” Scott said. “This is a broad stroke, but I think we’re dealing with it right with Facebook. This is a misdirection that has happened where it’s given the wrong kind of confidence to this generation, I think.”

While period/historical drama isn’t exactly the hottest genre in film right now, the notion that The Last Duel bombed because of millennials is full of crap considering the immense popularity of The Crown, Downtown Abbey, Bridgerton, or even Game of Thrones. The Downtown Abbey feature in 2019 made nearly $200 million worldwide, so the genre isn’t exactly dead. There’s no official reasoning behind why The Last Duel flopped, though the notable lack of buzz surrounding the film does mean that audiences weren’t exactly interested. However, the crucial part of this is Scott unnecessarily blasting audiences for his baseless option. I will never understand the purpose of filmmakers trashing audiences because said film flopped. Elizabeth Banks crapped on men for not seeing Charlie’s Angels and the results speak for themselves. Scott has been a chatter box lately, also trashing superhero movies by calling them “boring as s**t”. This is likely turning off audiences to seeing Scott’s films; House of Gucci was never expected to make Venom or Black Widow type of money; however, with the high buzz that the film had going in, it should’ve drawn a better number in the opening weekend.

House of Gucci Likely Had Some Disappointing Word-Of-Mouth

Don’t be fooled by the strong audience rating as the 1,000 plus feedback from fans isn’t enough to tell whether nearly $22 million people generally loved the film. House of Gucci is far from a bad film; however, it simply doesn’t live up to the hype that the trailers generated. Adult dramas have notably struggled during the pandemic era, so House of Gucci may have been doomed from the start, but the lackluster word-of-mouth regarding the film likely didn’t propel fans on the fence to see the movie. The general consensus was that House of Gucci was going to end up opening somewhere between $25 – $30 million, which isn’t much better for a feature with a price tag of $75 million, but the fact that it came lower than expectations is alarming. The $6.8 million in its second weekend means that the film just isn’t connecting with mainstream audiences and the movie may not be a big flop like The Last Duel, but it’s still a massive bomb considering all the factors that should’ve resulted in success.Ridley Scott